The bantu inhabit most of the continent s of the congo river except the extreme southwest. The bantu languages or narrow bantu languages are a branch of the nigercongo languages. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. The 2016 revision key findings and advance tables pdf. The present paper provides first insights into emblematic language use in bunia swahili, a variety of the bantu language swahili as spoken in. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the bantoid subgroup of the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language family. Bantu expansion shows that habitat alters the route and pace. Zones k and r are also included in this group on most trees. Problems of citation forms in dictionaries of bantu languages john g. Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmasters page for free fun content. Approximately 30004000 years ago, it split off from other southern bantoid languages when the bantu expansion began to the south and east. Geographically, bantu languages are spoken in the southern half of africa.
Medial markers are used by the large majority of bantu languages. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban. Over 500 languages are classified in this family, including swahili, xhosa, and zulu. Genetically, they form part of benuecongo, itself a part of the huge nigercongo phylum. From a comparative perspective, it is in fact the medial. The classification is primarily linguistic, and there are almost a hundred bantu languages, including luganda, zulu, and swahili.
Bantu words in american english terms you should know for week 11 part 02 are. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. Bantu language article about bantu language by the free. The bantu languages are a group of some 500 languages, primarily spoken in africa, that belong to the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language. Most bantu languages have tones which serve to make lexical andor grammatical distinctions. It offers a bench mark for future study and research in soundmeaning relationships between words of common origin shared in the ancient egyptian and bantu languages of africa. The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa. Middle passage bantu languages slang black english africanamerican vernacular english play the dozens. Saharan african languages, are quite commonly found in bantu languages though. Yet these languages are spoken by over 100 million people spread over most of subsaharan africa. They then combine many of these to form 26 intermediate groupings of which about half are controversial. The somali bantu lutheran family services rocky mountains. Protobantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the bantu languages, a subgroup of the benuecongo family.
Disambiguation of morphological analysis in bantu languages acl. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages. On the basis of common phonological or morphological innovations and relying on the intuition of other linguists, nurse and philippson propose to bundle the bantu languages in some 80 mostly uncontroversial local groupings. The principal writers are daniel van lehman and omar eno. Mwenyi k352 yukawa 1987b, use a high amount of initial markers, while languages of the northwest and central north, e. Faq for information about file content and naming conventions. Southern bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the. Although tanda is a common verb in zulu, it has not in zulu all these variations, and in some other language where it may by chance exhibit all the variations its own form is changed to londa or randa. Bantu languages, which impose a maximal size condition and stringent consonant distribution constraints on stems. Bantu articles on this topic in other wikimedia projects can be found at. Media in category bantu languages the following 24 files are in this category, out of 24 total.
The west bantu languages were paraphyletic, that is, they did not share a unique common ancestor. Sesotho sa leboa english online northern sotho english dictionary pukuntsu ya sesotho sa leboa seisimane. They include all of the major bantu languages of south africa, botswana, lesotho, swaziland, and mozambique, with outliers such as lozi in zambia and namibia, and ngoni in. Scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common protobantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. An estimated 2,5003,000 years ago bc to 500 bc, although other sources put the start of the bantu expansion closer to 3000 bc, speakers of the protobantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu bantu. Linguistic evidence regarding bantu origins the journal.
View bantu linguistics research papers on academia. There are five principal factors in bantu languages which contribute to. The southern bantu languages are a large group of bantu languages, largely validated in janson 199192. The exact place of bantu in this framework is controversial, and there is no comprehensive overview of bantu. The bantu languages descend from a common protobantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now cameroon in central africa. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu. All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. Guthrie, the classification of the bantu languages 1948, repr. The bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of africa from southern cameroon eastward to kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. The bantu migrations agriculture, ironworking technology spread throughout africa because of migration number of groups in africa spoke related languages originated from language called protobantu developed in what is now cameroon, nigeria over time more than 2,000 bantu languages developed. There is a high resemblance between all of the eastern bantu languages, which can be explained by a common ancestor and relatively recent splitting up, or to a period of physical contact, or, presumably to both nurse and philippson 1975. Kiango university of dar es salaam, tanzania abstract the headword of a dictionary entry serves different functions. English to xhosa translation page a website that translated words and phrases to and from xhosa by martha r.
Congobrazzaville national languages online dictionary, bantu web site. Cgp rule file has the following sections optional ones in. It is designed primarily for service providers and others assisting somali bantu refugees in their new communities in the united states. The southern bantu languages, however, are also a valid linguistic group the southern bantu languages are a group of languages in. Bantu words in american english montclair state university. Thus, a comparison of the acquisition of bantu languages offers an extremely rich area for research, providing insights not only into how language is learned, but also into the possible impact that language learning may exert on processes of historical change. A common characteristic of bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for. A brief summary of the bantu acquisition literature by language is provided below. Revising the bantu tree american museum of natural history.
By theend of thecourse you willbe able to think of a lot of other syntactic and morphological commonalities on your own. Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. The acquisition of bantu languages katherine demuth brown. They are nearly synonymous with guthries bantu zone s, apart from the exclusion of shona and the inclusion of makhuwa. The pectinate nature of the tree means that the bantu language groups that descended from the bantu common ancestor node 1, fig.
The linear ordering of tamneg markers in the bantu. Here, we build phylogenetic trees of bantu languages and map them onto. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of cameroon. Pagibete c401 reeder 1998, tend to favour final markers.
Since the early seventies, several classifications of bantu languages have been proposed. First, it is a form which the user will first look up in the dictionary before. Guthries divisions of the bantu languages were based on geography, not on language characteristics. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. Pdf there is disagreement about the routes taken by populations speaking bantu. Fifth, various semantic functions of wordforms are also a. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages comprising those of zanzibar, mozambique, the zambesi, kafirland, benguela, angola, the congo, the ogowe, the cameroons, the lake region, etc. The niger congo languages download ebook pdf, epub. Pdf cultural phylogeography of the bantu languages of sub. Bantu language is a crossword puzzle clue that we have spotted over 20 times. Fortunately, historical linguistics does not depend on old documents, and the full. Meeussen 1967 was particularly instrumental in reconstructing what is thought to be the noun class system of protobantu see also guthrie 196771 and welmers 1973. See also the what is the directory structure for the texts.
The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken by the bantu peoples throughout. In the case of most bantu languages these resources are not available now, and are unlikely to become available in the near future. Students of bantu languages have a great deal of material to work with, since the family is so large and speakers are widely scattered across africa. It is probably the origin of rap and has its own origin in the. Each word must end in a vowel though in some modern dialects in eastern equatorial, west and south africa the terminal vowel may be elided in rapid pronunciation, or be dropped, or absorbed in the terminal.
Introduction verb stems in bantu languages may include a number of derivational suffixes called extensions that express various functions, such as causative, applicative, reciprocal or passive. There are about 520 languages in the bantu family, 670 languages in the southern bantoid branch which includes bantu, and 1,532 in nigercongo. A survey report for the bantu languages by derek nurse cartographer. All members of a given class share the same prefix. The southern bantu languages, also known as bantu zone s, are a group of languages in the bantu language family. The largest group within the west bantu languages includes zones c and h, bira d32 and kumu d37. The somali bantu iii preface this booklet is a basic introduction to the people, history, and cultures of the somali bantu.
Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of. The title of this short working paper is called the bantu rosetta stones and its main purpose is to draw attention and awareness in the field of afrolinguistic egyptology. Morphologythe most distinctive morphological feature of bantu languages is the grouping of nouns in different classes, marked by a prefix. Use of plant names for the classification of the bantu languages of. Kiswahili, just like other languages, has its words divided into syllables according to the principle of increasing sonority. Bantu education act, 1953 1 bantu education act, 1953 bantu education act, 1953 act to provide for the transfer of the administration and control of native education from the several provincial administrations to the government of the union, and for matters incidental thereto.
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